The present invention relates to component mounters and mounting methods such as for mounting electronic components onto substrates.
Component mounters for mounting electronic components such as semiconductors on substrates are equipped with a feeder carriage provided with multiple parts feeders for supplying components. A mounting head picks up components from the feeder carriage for mounting them on a substrate. If many types or numbers of components are to be mounted in the same mounting stage, two or more pairs of feeder carriages and mounting heads, without being limited to a single pair of the feeder carriage and mounting head, are disposed on the same mounting stage. These several pairs operate independently to mount components.
A recognizer captures an image of a component picked up by the mounting head while being held with a nozzle of the mounting head before mounting the component on the substrate to identify each component and detect positional deviation. In many cases, one recognizer is provided per mounting head when several mounting heads are disposed on the same mounting stage. Accordingly, if any problem occurs with one of these recognizers, the component held by the mounting head corresponding to this problematic recognizer is not recognized, and thus the mounting operation of the mounter stops.
In addition, some components require high precision recognition. Such components need to be set on a feeder carriage that will cause them to be examined by the high precision recognizer. Although several recognizers may be placed on the same mounting stage that on the same mounting stage are different types, only some of the recognizers may be high precision type. Accordingly, if the number of components requiring high precision recognition exceeds the capacity of the high precision recognizer, the components cannot be placed in regular feeder carriages even though the regular feeder carriages have space. They cannot be placed in regular feeder carriages due to the need for precision recognition.
As described above, the use of this type of conventional mounter may result in stopping the mounting operation being implemented by a combination of a feeder carriage and mounting head using a recognizer which has been stopped, even if there are several alternative feeder carriages and mounting heads. Alternatively, the capacity of the feeder carriage may not be effectively utilized due to mismatching between types of components and recognizers, causing undesired discrepancies. Consequently, the conventional mounter may not be efficiently utilized.
The present invention aims to offer a mounter and a mounting method for improving the efficiency of use of component mounters.
The component mounter of the present invention comprises the following:
(a) more than one feeder carriage;
(b) more than one mounting head provided corresponding to the feeder carriages for picking up components from each feeder carriage; and
(c) transfer means for passing a component requiring transfer between the mounting heads.
The above configuration enables the improvement of the efficiency of use of the mounter by passing the component to another mounting head even when the operation of one of the mounting heads has been stopped.
The mounting method of the present invention comprises the following steps of:
(a) picking up a component from a first mounting head;
(b) passing the component from the first mounting head to a second mounting head; and
(c) placing the component on the substrate using the second mounting head.
The above method enables the more efficient use of the mounter as a result of passing the component to another mounting head when the operation of one of the mounting heads has been stopped.
Another mounting method of the present invention comprises the following steps of:
(a) picking up a component from a first feeder carriage using a first mounting head;
(b) passing the component from the first mounting head to a second mounting head;
(c) recognizing the component using a recognizer installed on a second feeder carriage for supplying components to the second mounting head; and
d) placing the component on the substrate using the second mounting head after recognition.
The above method enables the use of the second recognizer to recognize the component even if the operation of the first mounting head stops or a discrepancy occurs between the type of component and the first recognizer installed on the first feeder carriage for supplying components to the first mounting head. Accordingly, the efficiency of use of the mounter may be improved.